


Growing Pains

by Psyent1st



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Changelings, Faeries - Freeform, Gen, Harry Dresden as a Father, Harry takes care of a baby, He's not very good at it, Kidnapping, POV Harry Dresden, Roggenmutter, baby-swap, takes place between books 4 and 5
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:20:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24814456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Psyent1st/pseuds/Psyent1st
Summary: After the events of Summer Knight, Harry visits Michael Carpenter, and somehow volunteers to take care of Michael's son Little Harry for the weekend. How hard could it be? Of course, being Harry, things never go as planned.
Relationships: Harry Dresden & a baby, Michael Carpenter & Harry Dresden
Comments: 16
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I may have been inspired by The Mandalorian and Into the Spider-Verse.  
> 

Opening the door to my sub-basement lab wasn’t usually this difficult, but then again, I wasn’t usually carrying a twenty-five-pound bundle that kept trying to strangle me by grabbing my collar. I nearly tripped toward the bottom of the stairs, focused on not over-balancing as the bundle abruptly lurched toward my neck again, and I sent a whisper of power toward the candles lining my shelves and muttered, “ _Flickum biccus._ ”

The candles burst into cheerful, orange flames that illuminated the lab, casting harsh shadows on my tables and shelves. I couldn’t set the bundle down—there was nowhere to put it amongst all of my books and papers and magical paraphernalia—but I was becoming very close to being gleefully strangled.

“Bob,” I called, jerking my chin away from the pawing being in my arms. “Bob, wake up!”

On one shelf sat a bleached human skull, alone in a sea of trashy paperback romance books. At my words, the skull rattled slightly, and twin orange dots of flame glowed to life in the eye sockets. With an unsettling clacking sound, the jaws opened in a facsimile of a yawn. “Hey, there, boss, what’s—jumping gargoyles, Harry, is that a baby?”

I pulled tiny fingers out of my ear and turned the offending child around so it was facing the skull. “I don’t know,” I snapped. “What do you think?”

“Jeez, how long did you leave me in the skull, Harry? I need to be kept updated on your dating life! Or should I say—kept _abreast._ ” If the skull had eyebrows, Bob would have been waggling them. “But seriously, your love life has been drier than the surface of Mars recently, so how in the world did you pull this off?”

“It’s not mine, Bob. It’s…well, actually, that’s why I need you. I have a bit of a situation.”

Bob’s eye-lights narrowed. “Harry. Did you _steal_ a baby?”

“What?” I exclaimed, as the baby in question cooed and made grabbing motions toward the skull. “No, Bob, I did not steal a baby! What in the—do you really think that’s something I would do?”

“Ohhhh this is one of those good/evil things, isn’t it? People always get weird when there are babies involved. I always assumed it was something to do with continuation of the species, but there’s some morality stuff there, too, huh?”

I tried to pinch the bridge of my nose, but it was hard when there was a child actively trying to squirm out of my grip. “Yes. Yes, there is some morality stuff there, too.”

“Right,” the spirit of intellect said cheerfully. “So what do you need with your not-stolen baby?”

“I didn’t say that,” I said, adjusting my grip on the child that was now making little distressed sounds that it couldn’t go get the pretty talking skull. “I do think this one was stolen. Just not by me.”

There was a pause as Bob absorbed my words. “Okay. You’re going to have to fill me in on this one, Harry. Maybe you should start at the beginning.”

The Carpenter’s house always looked impeccable, and it had been no different that evening. I couldn’t say why I had decided to go, other than it had been a while since I’d seen Michael, and even longer since we’d gotten together for the heck of it and not because some superspook was running amok.

The white picket fence looked like it had a fresh coat of paint, and containers filled with brightly blooming orange and yellow petunias flanked the entryway. An honest-to-goodness haybale sat beside them, piled with orange, green, and white pumpkins of varying sizes. The fall décor wasn’t a surprise, as both Michael and Charity took a quiet, fierce pride in their home, and always strove to make it look its best. 

What was a surprise was that it was October 2nd, and I didn’t know where they had even found the pumpkins this early in the season. 

I pulled into the driveway and parked, noting the absence of the giant van they used to tote their basketball team’s worth of children around. Believe it or not, that actually made me pause and think, and for the first time I thought maybe showing up at Michael’s house unannounced was a bad idea. It wasn’t that I thought he would be mad—though his wife might be. It was that I’d completely neglected to take into consideration Michael’s responsibility as a parent. He had—what was it now, seven kids? He likely couldn’t just drop everything to grab a drink and catch up.

I sat in the Blue Beetle, thinking. That the van was gone could mean Michael wasn’t even here. He might have taken the kids out for dinner or something. But, there were lights on in the house. The Carpenters wouldn’t have just left them on without someone home. I would just have to take my chances and hope it wasn’t Charity.

_And call ahead next time, Harry, you dummy,_ I thought. I grabbed the six-pack container that was on my passenger seat and lurched out of the car. The container held four bottles of a new spiced ale Mac had released for fall, and two bottles of Coke, in case Michael didn’t like the ale, which I estimated to be as likely to happen as a zombie attack.

Then again, with my luck…

I headed to the front door, noting with a smile that one of the pumpkins had the name HOPE painted on it in childish lettering. I knocked, and waited in the cooling autumn air, until Michael opened the door.

He looked surprised to see me, but his bearded face immediately split into a broad grin. He had a baby held against his hip, a tiny little thing with a mop of fine brown hair, flushed red cheeks, and eyes that looked like they had just finished crying. His lip quivered when he saw me.

“Harry!” Michael said cheerfully, rubbing the little boy’s back with one massive hand. “Good to see you, my friend. What’s going on?”

I held up the six-pack lamely. “Uh. Would you believe me if I said nothing?”

Michael’s smile widened, and he moved back in the doorway, gesturing me to come in. “What a nice surprise! It’s just me and little Harry here tonight. We can have a boys’ night.”

I grinned as I followed him into the house, nudging off my shoes in the entryway. “Where’s the rest of the family?”

“They went to spend the weekend with Charity’s parents. Hank’s not been feeling well, so we stayed home.”

I followed Michael into the kitchen, setting the six-pack on the table as Michael settled into a chair, his son perched on his knee. “Little guy’s sick?” I asked, reaching over to tickle the baby’s pink cheek with a finger. Hank squirmed away from me, a cry starting to build in his throat.

Michael picked up his son and held him to his chest, rubbing the tiny back soothingly. He gave me an apologetic look. “He’s just got a cold, and he’s cranky. He’s also just entered into the stranger-danger phase, so it’s nothing against you personally.”

“Do you think he knows I’m his namesake?” I asked, pulling out two bottles of the ale.

Michael chuckled, rocking softly in his chair while Little Harry let out a half-hearted but steady wail. “We’ve taken to calling him Hank, to avoid confusion.”

“I’m sure that’s the only reason,” I said dryly, retrieving the bottle-opener off the side of the fridge and popping off the caps. Look, I can do it with my hands, but why risk torn-up fingers when there’s a tool for it right there? “It couldn’t possibly be because Charity hates me and resents the fact that you named your youngest child after me.”

The child in question, who had just started to settle down, let out a violent sneeze and started crying again in earnest. Michael gave me a nod of thanks as I set the bottle down in front of him, his hands currently occupied with trying to console his kid. “She doesn’t hate you,” he said, though he didn’t sound convincing. “She just worries because if a situation is dire enough to require both of us, we both tend to get hurt. I’m not blaming you,” he added quickly.

“Yeah yeah, correlation, causation, all that.” I sipped at the ale, served warm as Mac’s ales were supposed to be. I had to stop myself from moaning in pleasure at the taste. Mac knew beer, but I had to hand it to the White girls: pumpkin spice was divine.

Michael grinned at the look on my face. “Good?”

“Like fall in a bottle,” I agreed.

Eventually, as we sat, Hank (he was still Little Harry in my head) settled down and fell asleep against Michael’s shoulder, snoring slightly through his stuff nose but still somehow angel-perfect. Michael and I just talked, in a way we hadn’t gotten to in a long time, and soon, all four bottles were nearly empty. I told him about a recent string of kidnappings I’d helped SI solve, and he told me in great detail about a house remodel he was currently engaged in. I got caught up on how all of his kids were doing (holy cow, Molly was starting _high school_ ) and he got treated to an in-depth analysis of why Han shot first and why the remastered versions were an affront to good cinema.

At some point, Hank, still dead to the world, had wound up settled against my shoulder, drooling slightly. I instinctively rubbed the tiny back, his soft warmth lulling me, and I found myself yawning.

“That suits you,” Michael said with a small smile, inclining his head to his sleeping son in my arms.

I glanced down in surprise. Suited me? The little boy fit perfectly against my chest, but I couldn’t even remember the last time I had held an infant.

“Have you ever thought about it?” he asked quietly.

Something in my chest contracted. Having a family? Of course I’d thought about it. It was something I’d been wanting my whole life. I’d thought of being a dad, but only in the abstract. I knew at some point—years, possibly decades down the line—I wanted to fill the role for someone else that I never had in my own life. To be wholly there for someone else.

“Yeah,” I said, and it came out a more bitter than I’d intended. “Kinda hard though when you don’t have a partner.”

There had been someone, once, I would have considered having a family with. Susan Rodriguez. But over a year ago, the last time I got Michael involved, actually, I made a bad call that resulted in her getting hurt. More than hurt. Being together wasn’t even an option, let alone having a family. 

“If it’s something you want,” Michael said quietly, “I have faith it will happen for you. You’d be a good father, Harry.” 

I stared down at the sleeping child to avoid looking at Michael. I could feel my ears heating up at the praise. Could I be? I, who’d never had a decent father-figure in my life? Who lived in an ice-box of an apartment, and who had a tendency to have a near-death experience about once a year?

I liked to think I could.

Just then, a strange jingling noise came from the living room.

“My cell,” Michael explained when I looked at him questioningly. “It’s probably Charity. Excuse me.” He rose and hurried to go answer the ringing phone.

I stayed where I was, not wanting to risk my magic playing rough with the delicate circuits of Michael’s phone. Hank coughed in his sleep and turned his head to the other side before settling back in against my chest, and…yeah, I could get used to this. The kid took two breaths for every one of mine, and watching him breathe I felt calmer than I had in a very long time. Maybe it was because no way in hell was I going to get worked up over something trivial if it could interrupt my little buddy’s sleep.

Though he had shied away from me when awake, right now he was trusting me completely, to keep him warm and safe, to protect him while he slept, while he was sick. To make sure nothing bad or scary in the world could touch him. And I knew, instantly, that I would risk _everything_ to make sure nothing ever did.

Holy crap. Did I want kids?

Michael came back into the room, phone in hand, and the look on his face snapped me out of my reverie. Something was very wrong.

“I have to go,” he said, voice tight. I leaned forward, about ready to jump out of my chair if he needed me. “Alicia broke her arm,” he continued, looking more worried than he had when we had been about to take on a room full of vampires who were really, really pissed off. “She caught it in a door, it sounded bad. I’m sorry, Harry.” He scrubbed a hand over his bearded face. “I need to pack, get Hank ready to go…”

Something short-circuited between my brain and my mouth, and I found myself saying, “I’ll take him.”

Michael froze in his pacing and stared at me. “Harry? You…are you sure?”

I shrugged, careful not to disturb Little Harry. “Yeah. I mean, you and Charity are going to have your hands full with Alicia, and the little guy’s sick, right? He’ll need more attention than you’ll probably be able to spare. Besides, you deserve to be able to handle one crisis at a time like everyone else.”

My friend the Knight looked torn. I could read every expression as it flitted across his honest face. He was grateful I’d offered. He didn’t want to leave his son with someone who had basically no kid experience. He didn’t want to hurt my feelings that he was thinking of turning me down. He wanted my help.

“Come on, man,” I said. “I’m not totally irresponsible. I know what he means to you. He’ll only come back with one tattoo. I promise.”

At that Michael grinned, and seemed to make up his mind. “Alright. Thank you, Harry. Let me get him packed up…”

Which is how, thirty minutes later, I found myself with a car-seat buckled securely in the back of the Beetle, a diaper bag, a crib, and a new roommate for the weekend.

After all, how hard could it be?


	2. Chapter 2

“Ah,” said Bob the skull wisely. “You stole Michael Carpenter’s baby. Not the wisest move there, boss.”

“Argh!” I ground my teeth, and set the baby down on the floor of my lab. He sat for a moment, then scooched himself over to the bottom of one of my shelving units and grabbed a peacock feather I sometimes used for potions. “For the last time, Bob, I did not steal anyone! Also, for the record, it’s called kidnapping, not baby-stealing.”

“Toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe,” Bob said. “Still not seeing the issue here.”

“That—” I pointed at the little rugrat who had decided to jam the top of the feather into his mouth and suck on it, “—is not Michael’s kid.” 

The skull’s orange eyelights narrowed in to focus on the baby. “No? Don’t take this the wrong way, Harry, but are you sure? You gotta admit, they all look pretty similar at that age.”

“I’m, uh, ninety percent sure he’s not,” I said, listening to excited baby babbles as the kid pulled one of my old notebooks off the shelf. “I kinda got to know him and this isn’t him. He looks like Hank, but he’s not. I even went out on a limb and tried to soulgaze him to check—nada. It didn’t work.”

The skull tittered, rocking on its shelf. “Oh, you didn’t! You didn’t actually try to soulgaze a baby? I knew you were dense sometimes, but wow.”

“Am I supposed to know why that was a stupid idea?” I snapped. “What, do babies not have souls?”

“Of course they do. But it’s like…” Bob paused, and I got the impression he was figuring out how to dumb it down for me. “A baby’s soul is like the frame of a house that’s still being built. You can sort of see what it will look like, but you can’t predict what the paint will be, how the cabinets will look, what the carpet will feel like. Let alone the furniture and décor.”

I nodded slowly. “You’re saying…they just have the foundation for things, for what their souls will become.”

“Sure, if that helps you understand it. Babies are pure potential. That little guy probably has billions of possibilities to what he’ll be. That number drastically decreases every year they’re alive, but for now, your brain literally can’t begin to comprehend it. Ergo, no soulgaze. Also, you forgot one other important fact, oh great wizard.”

“And what might that be?” I asked exasperatedly as I bent down to pull the pointy end of the peacock feather away from the kid’s eye.

“A soulgaze works both ways. In the same way, _his_ little brain has no way of comprehending what your soul looks like.”

I could have slapped myself. Of course not. And maybe, I thought, that was a good thing. People who ’gazed my soul tended to look…disturbed by whatever they saw. Sure, Harry, let’s give the sixteen-month-old nightmares.

I picked him up, and turned him to face Bob. “So is there a way to tell? I have this sense there’s a glamour on him, or something, but I can’t see it.”

Bob’s eyes scanned up and down the kid’s body. “Wow. Uh, yeah, Harry, there is. It’s a glamour all right, a complex one.” He gulped. “It’s faerie-make. What did you say happened, again?”

Faerie? I looked down at not-Hank, who looked back up at me intently, before reaching out to stick a finger right up my nose. “Gah!” I caught the tiny hand and stared at him. “Who are you?” I whispered.

I had been wrong. So wrong. So, so wrong.

Taking care of a baby was freaking _hard_. I didn’t know why I had thought otherwise, except that Hank slept, well, like a baby the whole drive home. People misuse that expression. It apparently does not mean sleeping deeply and peacefully. Instead, it refers to waking up at odd intervals to scream absolute bloody murder.

As soon as I parked the car and started trying to get him out of the car-seat, Little Harry woke up, stared at me, realized I was not his dad, and erupted into an ear-splitting screech.

I couldn’t tell you how I managed to get into my apartment with twenty-five pounds of angry baby fighting me the whole way, but I did. “Yep, this is Michael’s kid,” I gasped, as an unexpectedly strong little fist socked me in the jaw. “Or maybe that’s Charity coming out in you.” 

He was inconsolable. He screamed as I unpacked all of his things, sending my thirty-pound tomcat, Mister, to the top of my tallest bookshelf in alarm. He looked down at us in disapproval, his yellow-green eyes clearly saying, _Would you shut that thing up?_

“I’m trying,” I muttered as little Harry arched away from my in my arms, throwing his head back and howling. 

I tried everything I knew to soothe him, which, admittedly, was not a lot, but he was angry and did not want to be here, and was letting me know it.

It wasn’t until I noticed how red his little face was, until I realized his cheeks were warm, that it hit me. Michael had said he’d been running a fever. Of course he was shrieking at me—he didn’t feel good and I’d hidden his dad somewhere from him. How rude of me.

I got some liquid Tylenol in him (which, let me tell you, was a lot harder than it sounded) and we settled onto the couch. With a muttered word and a flick of my hand, I lighted a fire in my hearth and watched it blaze up as I again put the kiddo on my chest and started rubbing the little back. It took about twenty minutes for the Tylenol to kick in, but he eventually went back to sleep.

It was a night of firsts for me. It was the first time I’d ever cleaned another human’s nose, the first time I changed a diaper. (Fun fact: there is a wrong way to put on a diaper, and if you do so it _will_ leak, and its contents _will_ get everywhere). It was the first time I did an emergency load of laundry in the middle of the night that wasn’t a direct result of my bleeding on something. 

I felt like I barely slept at all, but somehow we both got through it. Harry, with his limited baby facial expressions, seemed disappointed in the morning that it was still me and his dad hadn’t magically returned in the night, but I made scrambled eggs for breakfast, which seemed to move me higher in his good graces. Of course, most of it ended up on the floor.

Hell’s bells, how did Michael _do_ this? I was twelve hours in and about to raise the white flag. I’d barely slept, been covered in various bodily fluids which I didn’t want to think too hard about, and judging by the egg that was currently being joyously flung around my kitchen, I was going to have to do some serious cleaning.

I eyed Hank tiredly, and when he saw my gaze, he burst into uproarious baby giggles, which…okay, was pretty dang cute. He knew how to put on the charm, the stinker. 

“Okay, bud,” I said, rolling up the sleeves to my Cubs sweatshirt. “How’s about we get the egg out of your hair and then we go to the park or something, huh?”

My phone rang and I reached over to pluck it from its cradle, mentally trying to calculate the risk vs. reward of giving Hank a sink bath. “Yep,” I said absently into the phone.

“Harry, it’s Michael,” said the warm voice on the other end. “I just wanted to check in and see how things were going.”

“Oh hey. Things are…okay. We had eggs for breakfast and some of it even got in his mouth.”

Michael laughed quietly, and muffled voices in the background made me think he was maybe still at the hospital, and trying to keep his voice down. “That sound about right. Did he sleep through the night?”  
“He did not,” I confirmed cheerfully. “Fever’s down this morning but I gave him some more Tylenol just in case. Read the dosing instructions and everything.”

“Thank you so much for taking care of him,” Michael said emphatically. “I know we would have managed but I truly believe we needed you last night, and you turned up just in time.”

Huh. So, basically, I had played the role of a Knight, showing up fortuitously in a time of need…for an actual Knight. Instead of going too deep down that particular line of thought, I asked, “How’s Alicia?”

“Recovering well from surgery,” he replied. “They had to plate her arm, but she should be able to go home in another hour or so. They kept her overnight because they weren’t able to do the surgery until around 6am. But she’ll be fine.” There was a tight note in his voice that I only picked up because I’d seen Michael hurt, and I knew the way he sounded when that happened. He was in pain because his kid was in pain.

“Glad she’s doing well. And don’t worry about Little Harry. We’re good.” I glanced over to where the child in question was deliberately dropping clumps of scrambled egg on the floor for Mister to delicately lap up. Yep. Totally good. “I was thinking about taking Mini-Me to the park later.”

“Thank you again, Harry.” A woman’s voice close to the phone—Charity?—interrupted his words, and when he next spoke he sounded distracted. “I’m sorry, I need to go, but please do not hesitate to call if you need anything. God bless.”

“Yep. No worries, man. I’ve got this.” I hung up and faced Harry, taking a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s get you dressed.”


	3. Chapter 3

Don’t even ask how long it took to get myself and the kid cleaned up and into somewhat respectable clothing. Seriously. I don’t want to talk about it. First he fought me on getting out of his clothes, then he fought me on getting fresh ones _on_. Somehow, after a battle of wills in which tears were shed (and only a small amount of those were mine), I got Harry into a t-shirt with a white helmet on it which said STORM POOPER, and tiny baby jeans, as well as a tiny baby sweater. I wanted him to wear the matching little Timberland-knockoff boots, but he didn’t want those, so we compromised and he wore Velcro sneakers instead.

I glanced at him through the rearview mirror of the Beetle, as we drove to the park (the car-seat had not been any easier the second time around). “I still think the boots were the right call,” I said conversationally. “I mean, the sneakers are okay, but how cool would you look if you showed up to the playground with actual laces?”

He babbled something incomprehensible in response.

“Right? That’s what I’m saying! Velcro is so thirteen-months.” 

Harry somberly stuck his fingers in his mouth, in what I assumed was agreement.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I went on. “‘He’s a wizard, why couldn’t he have just magicked the boots to be more comfortable?’ Well, I tell you what: magic doesn’t work that way. I know some faeries who are pretty good with shoes, but not me. I wear a size sixteen. I wish I knew how to make shoes bigger. Those are hard to find off the rack.” 

Huge blue eyes stared back at me in the mirror.

“Hey, kid, can you say ‘magic’?”

Little Harry blinked at me, before saying, around his fingers, “Mick.”

“Eh, close enough.” We lapsed into silence, broken only by the sound of Hank trying determinedly to blow raspberries. I felt like I maybe should be saying more to him—wasn’t talking to babies supposed to be good for their development?—but I found I didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t really understand me, and I sure as heck couldn’t understand his babbling sounds. This was the longest amount of time I’d spent with a kid this young in…ever. I’d felt confident in telling Michael I would handle him for a few days, but that had been when he was sleeping quietly. Since then, I felt like I was way over my head and only just starting to realized how deep I was in it. It felt like everything was a constant battle: to get him to eat, to sleep, to wear clothes.

I knew being a parent wasn’t supposed to be easy. But I never really thought it would be quite this hard. With a growing sense of unease, I wondered: what if I just wasn’t cut out to be a father? 

I forced myself to take a deep breath as I pulled into a parking space. I was starting to freak out, all because I discovered there was a learning curve to changing a diaper. It had been less than twenty-four hours that I’d had Harry. Surely even Michael had panicked a bit the first day after Molly was born. Plus, I thought, getting out of the Beetle and fighting with the buckles on the car-seat, I was learning on the upgraded model. Harry had already had a year and a half to start developing a personality and preferences. 

He also wasn’t shy about letting me know about them.

Fortunately, he was down to get into his stroller and go for a walk, and actually cooperated with me as I got him seated. He intently watched the strangers heading past, grinning and giggling when they waved and cooed at him. One or two lucky people got a shy, “Hi,” from him.

I didn’t get the same attention. It couldn’t possibly be because I was swearing under my breath as I tried to get the stupid roof of the fancy stroller to go down. These things were supposed to be baby-proof by design, but Hell’s bells, were they adult-proof too?

“Harry?”

The incredulous voice caused me to turn, and the sight made me stare. Just a bit.

Lieutenant Karrin Murphy of the Chicago PD was standing behind me, breathing hard from running and sweating slightly, her shoulders and face glistening with it. She wore a tight-fighting athletic tank top and running shorts, which showed off the lean hard muscle of her body.

I’d worked with Murphy in several capacities, but nearly all of them had been professional, and I’d never seen that much of her skin.

It, uh. Well. She looked good. Not that I would tell her that. She’d probably break something of mine that I really didn’t want broken.

She unhooked an earbud and stared at me appraisingly. “My eyes are up here, Dresden.” Her tone left no room for argument, and I sheepishly made sure my gaze was fixed on her face. 

“Good day for a run,” I said, as innocently as possible, looking toward her eyes without meeting them. It was a difficult trick, but by necessity most wizards learn to do it to avoid a soulgaze. Murphy and I had certainly gotten a lot closer since I had chosen to throw caution to the wind and fully let her in on the spooky side of things, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to soulgaze her anytime soon. That was a sort of intimacy I didn’t think we were ready for. 

Besides, the last woman who’d looked into my eyes had passed out. 

“Sexist pig,” Murphy replied, but there was a lightness to the way she said it that wouldn’t have been there a year ago.

An October wind blew through us, and I did my best not to shiver in my sweatshirt. Despite my best efforts, goosebumps rose on my arms and the back of my neck. Murphy, with sweat from her run drying on her bare arms, didn’t quite manage to suppress it. Hank let out a surprised-sounding coo in response to the breeze, and Murphy blinked.

“Which reminds me: Harry, why do you have a baby?” 

I wheeled the stroller around so Murphy and little Harry could get a look at each other. The baby was wide-eyed, staring at Murphy like he’d never seen her before, which, I realized, he probably hadn’t. His seat buckle had somehow come undone, so I reached down and snapped him back in. Must not have done it right the first time.

“Murph, this is Harry, Michael’s youngest.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. “Harry? Like…”

I sighed. “Yes, he named him after me. I didn’t exactly get a say in the matter. Neither did Charity, I may add.” 

Murphy grinned, and concealed it by waving at the little boy. “I’m sorry, are you saying this poor kid’s name is _Harry Carpenter_?” 

“That’s what I said!” I replied, exasperated. “But they didn’t ask me. Call him Hank if it helps. Michael does.”

“Aww. Hi, Hank.” Murphy waggled her fingers at him. “Is Harry taking good care of you?” 

Whoa. Murphy and baby talk. She had raised the pitch of her voice to talk to Hank and it was…dare I say… _cute_. Not that I would tell her that.

“Michael had an emergency, so he left Hank with me for the weekend,” I explained.

Murphy dropped her voice to an undertone. “A spooky kind of emergency?”

“Nah, just the regular, family kind. Harry has a cold, so I offered to take him.” Speaking of, I examined the kid’s face for signs of sneezes, but there was nothing. Looked like he was finally starting to feel better. 

Murphy turned and started walking with us, back the way she’d come on her run. “Never really thought of you as the parental type,” she teased, reaching down to ruffle Hank’s hair. He started at the touch and stared at her in shock, still determinedly sucking on his thumb. 

“Hey, I can handle a kid!” I said, a little defensively. “He’s been good, really. Kind of fussy last night but we managed.”

“Did you change his diaper?” Murphy asked, grinning up at me. “The great Harry Dresden, doing battle with a blow-out.”

“We managed,” I repeated with a dignified sniff.

“You can’t just—” she made a vaguely mystical gesture with her fingers, “—with a messy diaper. Or did you find that out the hard way?”

“Oh, like you’re the diaper expert,” I snapped, though I couldn’t stop the corner of my mouth from twitching up.

“I do have eleven cousins who are under the age of five. I’ve babysat a time or two.”

“Great! Then you get the next one.” 

Murphy slugged me in the shoulder.

We walked amiably around the park, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the contrast of the cooling breeze. The leaves had only just started to blush red and orange, and made for a semi-interesting conversation point between Murphy and myself. Hank was quieter than he’d been that morning, and seemed content to stare at all the passersby, turning his head to watch those he found especially interesting.

We bought pretzels from a street vendor, and little Harry ate almost a whole one by himself as Murphy and I fed him bite-sized pieces of ours. It was like he hadn’t eaten all morning. 

It was kind of nice, to just have a day to enjoy the calmer things my city had to offer, and to not worry about protecting the citizens, instead just getting to be one of them. Plus, I hadn’t gotten to spend much time with Murphy outside of saving the world lately, so that was a nice change of pace.

A young woman, out for a walk hand-in-hand with her girlfriend, smiled at us as she passed. “You have a beautiful baby.”

Almost immediately, Murphy flushed pink. “Oh, no, we’re not—”

“He isn’t—” I said at the same time.

“—not that we—”

“—we’re babysitting,” I finished lamely. 

The young women nodded, and the one who had spoken raised a hand in apology. “Sorry! Didn’t mean to assume. He’s sweet.” 

They continued walking, and I glanced over at Murphy. Her face was red, and, if the burning in my cheeks was any indication, so was mine.

“So that was awkward,” I commented, laughing slightly. “I mean, not that it would be, like, awkward to have…a f-family with you, just that we aren’t together, and wasn’t that a little stereotypical of them to assume that we were? Just because we’re out walking, and—”

“It’s fine, Dresden,” she said, still pink. 

I focused on little Harry, who was slurping down water from a sippy cup, mostly to avoid looking at Murphy. I hadn’t really let myself go down that particular train of thought where she was involved, for various reasons. And to be honest, the idea of having a family with anyone but Susan filled me with a mix of sadness and guilt that I tried to avoid, unless I wanted to shut down for the rest of the day. I knew I wasn’t in a place to even consider the possibility that I could have a normal, happy family, and it wasn’t as if Murphy and I had anything remotely close to a romantic relationship.

So why, in the midst of all those feelings, had a small part of me felt proud at the woman’s words?

Hank suddenly hurled his cup on the ground, letting out a low whining sound and jolting me out of my reverie. Murphy picked it up and tried to hand it back to him, but he shoved it away, looking distressed. 

“I think he’s tired, Harry,” Murphy said softly, handing the cup to me instead.

“Yeah?”

“They tend to get fussy and grumpy when they’re tired. Plus, if he’s sick he might need more sleep right now.”

I looked at Hank, who was, for lack of a better word, pouting. It wasn’t quite noon yet, so I’d be surprised if he was tired, but neither of us had really slept great the night before so what did I know. I felt his forehead, and he didn’t feel warm. He also hadn’t sneezed or coughed in a while. Go, tiny baby antibodies.

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “I’ll take him home. What do you say, Hank? Can you say bye-bye to Lieutenant Murphy?”

He stared, and popped his thumb back in his mouth.

She smiled at him, ruffling his dark blond hair. “See ya, kiddo. Thanks for letting me hang out with you.” She moved toward me, as if to give me a hug, but stopped short and held out her hand, lips pressed together. “Dresden. Good to see you.”

Quashing down a sharp twinge of regret that I wasn’t sure I fully understood, I shook her hand with false gravitas. “Lieutenant. Always a pleasure.”

She had the grace to look a little embarrassed as she realized she may have been too formal. “See you around, Harry.” 

I wheeled little Harry back to the car. He got continuously more fussy as we went, and I found myself keeping up a stream of inane chatter to him as he started to twist around and try to get out of the stroller.

Finally, we got back to the Beetle, and I got to start the process of buckling him into the car-seat. He didn’t fight me like I thought he might, but he did somehow manage to get a tight grip on the chain of the silver pentacle amulet I wore around my neck. Nearly choked out by an infant. Not my finest moment. 

I buckled myself in the car, and looked at him through the rear-view mirror. “Maybe we both need a nap,” I conceded. “Maybe this afternoon I can give you a magic show. What do you think? Magic?”

He giggled, but didn’t try to repeat the word, like he had earlier.

Once back at my apartment, I held Harry to my shoulder as I went down the stairs to my front door. To my surprise, the kiddo just melted into me, clinging on and burying his face in my sleeve. 

Wow. It was…really stinking cute. I wanted to just freeze and leave him there for as long as he wanted, but I needed to risk jostling him to open the door. Fortunately, he didn’t react to the movement, and kept his face shoved into my shoulder, like I was the safest place in the world. I plopped us down on the couch, and Hank, apparently worried I was setting him down, let out a squawk of protest before snuggling back in.

I patted his little back and listened to him intently sucking his thumb. He pushed himself up so he was staring at my face, and reached up his non-occupied hand to trace pudgy fingers over my jaw and nose, studying me with a surprising amount of focus.

I studied him back, scarcely wanting to breathe in case it broke his concentration. After our rocky start last night, I’d sort of gotten the idea that he didn’t like me too much, which was totally understandable. I was big and tall with a deep voice that could be loud if I wasn’t careful, and, most importantly, I wasn’t his dad. In some ways, I was an infant’s worst nightmare.

But maybe, after our morning at the park, he’d changed his opinion of me. He was certainly clinging to me like I was his new best friend.

Mister jumped lightly onto the couch, an impressive feat for his bobcat-sized frame, and stuck out his neck to sniff at Harry.

I smiled. “Yeah, now that he’s not crying he’s pretty cute, huh?”

Mister hissed and backed away, glaring at the baby like he was a personal threat to the cat’s territory.

Little Harry jumped at the noise, and I instantly started making shushing noises while glaring at my cat. “What is wrong with you?” I whispered to him. “This is Michael’s kid! Be nice.” 

But Mister’s ears were flat against his head, and he was licking his lips, which is cat for “I am severely freaked out.”

Now, Mister doesn’t scare easily. He probably weighed more than the kid. He had a long-healed torn ear, and a bobbed tail from fighting. Obviously, he won. The last time I’d seen him freaked out was when an actual demon had burst its way through my defenses and into my apartment. 

With a growing sense of unease, I looked back at the baby, who was currently occupying himself by picking at the stubble on my jaw. What could be causing Mister to act like this? I thought back over our day, hoping to find inconsistency that would explain it.

Fact one: Hank had a cold, and still had a low fever this morning at breakfast. I gave him medicine with his eggs to help him feel better. Fact two: He didn’t like me much. He was more comfortable with me today than the night before, but still clearly upset that he wasn’t at home. Fact three: He was a talkative little thing, constantly making noise or babbling, sometimes trying to imitate sounds.

Fact four: After meeting Murphy at the park, Harry’s cold suddenly seemed a lot better. When we’d gotten pretzels, he acted like he’d never had breakfast. He was abruptly way more friendly to me, and was a lot less talkative and more tactile. Almost like a different person.

And now my cat was freaking out.

“Shit,” I said, and lurched to my feet, taking the baby with me. “ _Shit._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a funny story. Apparently I don't do humor super well. Anyway, enjoy Harry freaking out!


	4. Chapter 4

In my sub-basement lab, I pulled not-Harry down from trying to climb one of my shelves and held him, trying to quash the mounting panic that was attempting to crawl its way up my throat.

“Oh, god. _Oh, god._ I lost Michael’s kid. I had him less than twenty-four hours, and I lost him. Bob, what am I going to do?” 

“Well gee, boss, I don’t know,” said the skull, voice dripping sarcasm. “If only there were some way to find missing people. If only it were something you were good at, something that was unique to your skill set.” 

“Shut up,” I snapped at him, but his obnoxious commentary had helped me snap out of the negative spiral I was heading down. Right. Right. I was a wizard. Finding people was what I did. I was also unique among wizards in that I happened to also be a private investigator. Honestly, in some ways this was right up my alley. If it had been anyone other than my best friend’s baby, it would be just another day at work for me.

Of course, it was my best friend’s baby, and that meant this situation got upgraded from “urgent” to “emergency.” It also meant I was a tighter-than-normal deadline. There was no way I could let Michael and Charity know what had happened. The contents of my stomach turned to ice at the thought. Charity would kill me faster than you could say “the late Harry Dresden.” I didn’t know when they would be back home, but from the conversation I’d had with Michael this morning, it sounded like Alicia would be discharged soon. They would go back to Charity’s parents’ place, but they would want to go back to their own house, as soon as possible, maybe as early as dinnertime tomorrow, at which point I would need to drop Hank off, and it sure as hell better be the real Hank.

That gave me about thirty hours to figure this out, and get little Harry back. I’d worked on tighter deadlines, but that didn’t make it any easier.

“Right,” I said aloud. “Okay. I guess first thing, I need to know who exactly this little guy is. Maybe if I can figure that out, I can start to get a lock on Hank.”

“He’s definitely a changeling,” Bob said helpfully.

I hefted the boy up under his arms and looked at him closely. He still looked exactly like Harry Carpenter, but now that I was looking for it, there was something different in his eyes that said this was a different person.

“A changeling?” I repeated. “Like Fix and Lily? Half-human, half-fae?”

“Well possibly. Probably. But there’s another use of the term, which refers to human babies which were swapped with a faerie child. Usually, they’re taken for revenge, and grow up in Faerie as some kind of servant. Then the baby fae gets pampered in the mortal realm, until they come into their powers and start causing havoc.”

“I am not letting Michael’s kid be a servant to the Sidhe,” I said firmly. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, focusing my attention on the spot between my eyes, feeling the pressure build in that space, until I opened my Sight.

A wizard’s Sight, sometimes called the Third Eye, allows a wizard to see the world the way it truly was, with all the energies that flow in the world, and also lets the user see through all but the strongest illusions and glamours, like what was on Not-Hank.

Looking at him through my Sight, I could see a swirling dark purple energy around the baby, the indication of the glamour, and Harry Carpenter’s transparent likeness sat over his little frame like a ghostly after-image. Underneath, a different child was staring at me. His eyes were dark brown, in contrast to Harry, who never lost his baby blues. This baby’s skin was darker as well, the shade of walnut wood, many hues deeper than those of the Carpenter family. His short black hair was curly, though still baby-fine. 

This was a top-tier glamour, affecting all the senses. I hadn’t noticed the difference in the texture of this little boy’s hair from Harry’s, and he even smelled like the Carpenter’s preferred brand of shampoo.

I shut my eyes and with them my Sight, losing the view of what my little friend truly looked like. When I opened my eyes again, the appearance of Harry Carpenter was looking back at me, blue eyes studying my face. If I concentrated, I could start to see past the glamour, to the deep brown eyes that were really there. There was a gleam in the brown that made me think Bob was right, and this child was not fully human.

I sighed, and adjusted the kid in my grip so he was held with his back to my chest, which was more comfortable for us both. Unfortunately, I wasn’t really sure I had obtained any information from using my Sight. Did I think I would recognize a random baby? All I’d really confirmed was that I wasn’t holding onto an adult faerie in disguise. 

“It’s definitely not Hank,” I told Bob. “And there’s something about his eyes that’s making me think you were right and he is a changeling, in both senses of the word.”

“Of course I was right,” Bob said with a sniff. “Faeries are all about even exchange. They couldn’t take the Carpenter kid without leaving a baby of their own, and changelings are a dime a dozen compared to actual faerie babies. They don’t reproduce with each other as easily as they do with mortals.”

“An even exchange,” I echoed. “So does that mean, if I return this little guy, they’ll give Harry back?”

Bob gave me a dead-eyed stare, which was impressive, as his eyes were just glowing orbs of light. “Will they give him back,” he mimicked. “No, boss, I sort of doubt it.”

“It would be worth a shot,” I mumbled. “So that means…I have two babies to figure out what to do with.” I ran my hand through Not-Hank’s hair, wishing I could feel its true curly texture, rather than the straight hair the glamour was making me feel. I was getting sensory whiplash in trying to hold his real appearance in my mind.

“Whoever his parents are, they might not want him back,” Bob cautioned. “Changelings don’t really belong with humans or faeries until they Choose.”

“Well, someone was taking care of him,” I said, thinking of his true appearance, which still had a good amount of baby fat, even if he wasn’t quite as chunky as Harry Carpenter. “Maybe his mom is out there, desperate to get him back.” I turned to start making my way back to the ladder leading upstairs.

“Maybe,” Bob agreed. “Oh, hey, Harry!” he called, stopping me. “Let’s say his mother is still out there. Do you think he was breastfed?”

I froze, brain grinding to a halt at the sudden non-sequitur. “Uh…”

The skull leered. “When you give him back, think I’d be able to do a ride-along?”

“OH MY GOD, BOB.” I stomped my way up the stairs, cheeks flaming, slamming the trapdoor to my lab shut.

Not-Hank jumped at the loud noise and started to make little whimpering sounds that threatened to turn into full-fledged wailing.

I bounced him a bit in my arms, realizing that in the few hours I’d had this kid, I’d somehow managed to avoid a complete meltdown, and I wanted to keep that streak going. “Oh, no, hey, shh, you’re okay,” I whispered. “Sorry, I was dumb to slam the door like that. But come on, you heard what he was implying about your mom. You would have done the same.” The whimpering noises continued, though began to decrease as I kept bouncing him. I started pacing slowly around my tiny apartment, thinking out loud to the baby.

“Okay. Obviously we need Hank back. And I would think they would be keeping him in the same place you came from, wherever that is. So if I can figure that out, I should be able to find Hank and get him back.” The baby leaned his head against my chest and made a small sound. “Yeah, I know, it won’t be that easy.” I tightened my grip on the little body. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to abandon you. I’ll figure out where you belong and get you home.” 

Slowly, as I did more laps around my living room, the baby’s (I needed to find another name for him than “Not-Hank”) eyes started to drift shut. He’d had a busy day, and I realized he hadn’t had a nap. He had been whisked away by faeries, had a powerful glamour placed on him, been swapped with another kid, and wound up in the bumbling care of a child-impaired wizard. Of course he was tired. 

I was itching to get going on tracking down Harry. The likelihood was, if the faeries truly wanted him for some purpose, they wouldn’t hurt him, but I didn’t want to risk being wrong on that fact. I couldn’t imagine he was having a good time, alone in a strange world, without his parents. 

But as his doppelganger drifted into sleep, I forced myself to admit that resting for an hour or so was a necessary stop. I needed to prepare for the next steps, and I needed this kid to do them. Not-Hank let out a tiny snore, and despite my mounting concern, I couldn’t help but smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a shorter chapter this time, but this seemed like an appropriately completed scene, before things get moving. I feel like I've overcome a mental block though, in that I've stopped telling myself "this is a SHORT story" and it seems to be flowing more easily now that I've let myself relax a bit. So hopefully it will seem smoother from here on out. Thanks to all you wonderful people for reading! Comments are greatly appreciated <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait on this chapter! It's a longer one this time, and it gave me more trouble than I expected. This was one of the first scenes I came up with, but actually writing it... let's just say, moving Harry from one place to another is unnecessarily tough. I am still not happy with the pacing and descriptions in some places, so any constructive criticism is welcome!

A bit more than an hour later, and I was armed for proverbial bear. I’d dug out a tin of salve the Gatekeeper had given me, which let me see through faerie glamours without using my Sight and therefore avoid the ramifications of using it, and I had smeared it under my eyes. I had my shield bracelet strapped to my wrist, my blasting rod ready for battle, and my hardwood staff. Perhaps most importantly, I had a new addition to my arsenal: a baby carrier. Not-Hank (man, I really needed to find something else to call the kid) was now securely strapped to my chest, and seemed to be enjoying it, if the excited babbling meant anything.

He was crucial to the next part of my plan. I had already cast a slight thaumaturgical spell on the kid, and the crystal pendant I had wrapped around my wrist would tug me in the direction I wanted. It was almost ingenious, and I grinned fiercely to myself. Try to pull one over on me, huh? Try to steal my friend’s kid? Now, the very glamour that had been used to trick me would be the faeries’ undoing. The spell on Not-Hank would tug on the residual magic lingering where it had been cast, effectively leading me back to their hidey-hole, and hopefully, to Harry and to where Not-Hank truly belonged.

I looked down at the kiddo who was now firmly strapped to my breastbone, and smiled at the curly black hair. With the Gatekeeper’s salve, I could see his true appearance easily, and damn it if he wasn’t adorable. Now that I had familiarized myself with his features, I thought he might actually be a little younger than Harry. He was smaller, and his movements didn’t seem quite as coordinated. It might also explain why he was less talkative than Harry; he might be too young for actual words.

_Michael would know,_ a small part of my brain whispered. But I couldn’t ask Michael or Charity for help. If they knew I’d lost their kid, they’d murder me, and then they’d never let me babysit for them again.

“Okay, buddy,” I said, gearing myself up. “Let’s rock ‘n roll.”

This may be a surprise to people who don’t have kids, but it turns out you can’t actually drive with an infant strapped to your chest.

I wasted a few extra moments having to untangle the kid from the carrier, and load him into the car-seat like I should have done in the first place. I didn’t bother taking the carrier off, as I would just have to put him back in it once I got…wherever we were going. So it hung off my shoulders like an empty bladder. Dad fashion. Oh yeah.

Swinging gently from my wrist, the point of the quartz crystal aimed north-east, guiding me toward the original source of Not-Hank’s glamour. I’d used this type of tracking spell many times before, and while it had an 80% success rate, there was one glaring flaw to it: it invariably pointed directly at the target. Chicago roads, on the contrary, were not designed to take a driver directly to his destination, let alone directly to the target of a magical tracking spell. Which meant I found myself doubling back on myself several times, and twice nearly turned the wrong way down a one-way road.

As I drove, I kept glancing back at the baby in the back seat. Dark eyes stared back at me in the mirror, while he sucked serenely on his thumb. Then, I was treated to a shy smile as his lips curved up around the thumb.

A feeling rose up in my chest at that smile, like I’d just been punched in the gut. This kid, this sweet, innocent, tiny kid had been left with a total stranger, essentially abandoned. He didn’t have a clue what had happened; he was just happy to get my attention and to have me feed him. It was a far cry from how Harry had recoiled from me, seeing as I was not his dad, and I started to get a bad feeling about the sort of care Not-Hank had had before being dumped with me. 

Not that I was an expert on child psychology, but I had a dim recollection that kiddos who didn’t have a strong connection with their caretakers also didn’t have a good grip on the whole “stranger danger” deal. Why bother, if any old adult could offer the same quality of care as a neglectful parent?

I gritted my teeth, tensing my hands on the wheel. What sort of monsters would do that to a baby?

The same monsters who now had Michael’s son.

The quartz prism tugged at my wrist, and I realized it was leading me back to the park where I had taken Harry this morning. My brain started whirring. Actually, it made a lot of sense. There must be a weak point in the Veil with the Nevernever somewhere in the park. It had been after leaving the park that I realized there was something up with the kid. It must have been here that he was swapped.

A surge of relief washed over me. That meant Harry Carpenter, the real Harry Carpenter, really had been in my care this morning. While I had been fairly certain of that fact, there was always a small chance Harry had been taken from his parents weeks ago, and I had been given the cuckoo in the sparrow’s nest without knowing it. I did not want to break it to the Carpenters that the child they’d been raising wasn’t their own. Fortunately, it seemed that wasn’t the case.

Then, like a zeppelin, my relief took a sharp nosedive into guilt. Shit. That absolutely meant he had been kidnapped right from under me. I had been responsible for him for less than a day, and something like this happened.

I shook myself out of that train of thought. Self-pity wouldn’t help me find Harry.

After circling the block a few times, I found a place to park and began the process of unbuckling the kid from the carseat. He made impatient sounds at me when I didn’t move fast enough, pushing his little body against the straps.

“Hey, easy,” I said, when his boot collided with my wrist. In his effort to free himself, he had somehow gotten his leg looped around one of the straps I had just unbuckled, and we grumbled at each other as I worked to extract him. “You are not making this easy,” I grunted. “Is this a normal baby thing? Or is this a you thing?”

“Nuh!” he shouted, the loudest vocalization I’d heard him make so far.

“Okay, okay!” Freed from the carseat at last, he quieted almost immediately as I picked him up. I got him secured in the carrier on my chest, and we took off into the park, following the tug of the quartz bracelet.

This process was made harder than usual by the addition of tiny fingers that kept grabbing ahold of the bracelet, causing me to have to pause every few steps to pry the chubby hand away. Unfortunately, this seemed not to deter the kid like I’d hoped, and instead made it a sort of game, if the delighted giggles were any indication.

I paused to buy a couple more pretzels from the vender Murph and I had stopped at in the morning, and fed the kid a few bites at a time, which seemed to occupy him enough to leave my crystal alone to do its job.

Eventually, after a bit more wandering, the point of the quartz kept swinging back to aim directly at a bush tucked several feet back from the paved walkway. The leaves at the very tip of the bush were beginning to blush red with the cooler weather, but otherwise it looked no different than the other bushes around it. I circled it carefully, searching for anything out of the ordinary.

After several minutes of staring at the bush, it became clear there was nothing. Not a single leaf out of place, or a tiny footprint to give me a clue. Still, that wasn’t entirely unsurprising when dealing with faeries.

I extended my hand, palm down, and with it my wizard’s senses. Against my palm, there was a faint tingle of power, the buzz of residual magic on my skin. By the intensity of it, I could tell it was several hours old. The timeline fit with when I estimated Hank was taken, but the trace of magic had broken down too much for me to get any additional information about the spell or its caster. 

I glanced down at the kid, curious if he remembered the spot as the place he had come from, or if he was possibly picking up on the lingering magic that had created the glamour he now wore. He seemed completely unconcerned, though, as all of his attention seemed to be focused on waggling his own foot.

“Yeah, that’s about right,” I sighed. “Okay, time for Plan B.” 

Plan B was going to be a bit tricky to pull off in the middle of the park, because it required privacy. I needed to consult with someone who could be a bit shy, and typically I would wait until nightfall to even attempt speaking to him if there were other humans around. But, it was already inching toward late afternoon, and I was on a time crunch. I couldn’t afford to wait, and neither could the little boys.

I wandered deeper into the park, finally finding a suitable location. The park was starting to clear out as the sun dipped lower and the temperature began to drop, and the bench I’d found was remote enough from the walkways that we weren’t likely to be interrupted by any lingering walkers in the park. 

Using my boot, I cleared away a small patch of dirt in front of the bench, which had already been tamped down by the feet of countless visitors. Then, I crouched down and sketched a summoning circle in the dirt, a pentagram representing the five alchemical elements, bound by a ring representing human will.

Placing a soft pretzel in the center of the circle, I rose and began murmuring the Name of the being I wanted to speak with. As per the Laws of Magic, I only put the barest suggestion of my will into the whispered Name. I was toeing the line as it was, using my magic to compel the will of another creature, and besides, this was sort of a friend. I didn’t want to be rude.

It wasn’t long after the Name went into the world that I saw a glow, like the lingering spark from a firework, arcing straight at us. The tiny light streaked downward, before alighting in the center of the circle, the glow fading as the dewdrop faerie stood on the ground, dragonfly wings fluttering in confusion as he paced around the pretzel.

“Hey, Toot-toot,” I said, when the little faerie looked up at me in bewildered betrayal.

“ _Harry_ ,” he said in hushed tones. “Something is wrong with the pizza.”

“Uh, yeah, I wasn’t able to get you pizza this time, but I thought you might want to try a pretzel.”

Toot looked scandalized. “A pretzel? But it’s not _pizza_ , Harry!” 

I grimaced internally, hoping the pizza faux pas wouldn’t be a breach of etiquette I couldn’t recover from. He was much more adamant about the pizza than I’d anticipated. “It isn’t, you’re right,” I agreed seriously. “But, some people make pizza out of pretzels, so really, you’re ahead of the curve.”

The tiny faerie spun in place, staring wildly around in search of “the curve.”

I swallowed the urge to tell him, “you just missed it,” and instead said, in a grave tone, “I really need your help, Toot. I need information. And because of my error, in failing to provide you with pizza, if you’re able to help me out, I’ll get you two slices.”

“Oh, Harry,” Toot-toot breathed, the indignation melting off his face as his eyes widened. “Two whole slices? For me?”

I nodded. “Two slices, in exchange for information.”

“Oh sure!” He buzzed upward, lavender hair blowing in his self-generated breeze, until he was about level with my nose. “Information! A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance!” He puffed out his little chest proudly, the label of the Pepto-Bismol bottle he wore as armor jutting out with the motion. 

I blinked. “That’s…no, I need _specific_ information, Toot. As in, I have questions for you.”

“Ohhh.” He rolled his eyes at my foolishness. “You should have said.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tiny arm reach out for the fluttering faerie, pudgy fingers making grabbing motions at the flickering wings. Gently, I caught the arm and pulled it back, before the kid got stabbed with an X-Acto sword, or Toot lost a wing.

“Toot, the child in my care was taken by faeries and replaced with this little guy, who’s a changeling. I need to get my friend’s baby back. Do you know where he might be?”

For a moment, Toot looked baffled, staring at the child held to my chest. He was only half the baby’s size. “There is no ‘back,’ Harry,” he said slowly, as though I had asked him to explain quantum mechanics to the infant. “You have him now.”

“Yes, I know.” I pulled Not-Hank’s other arm back from grabbing at Toot. “I know faeries will sometimes take a human child and leave a changeling in its place. I know they don’t come back. But what I don’t know, what I _need_ to know, is where would the human child be? Where would they take it?”

Toot bobbed back and forth in the air uncertainly, eliciting an excited squeal from the baby. Toot startled at the noise and lost about a foot in height before fluttering back up to eye-level with me, working hard to seem unruffled. His tiny eyes flicked to my face and away again rapidly. “They would take it to Faerie. They don’t bring it back.”

Huh. 

This was something I had experienced plenty of time before, but never with Toot: he was avoiding giving me a direct answer. Faeries are incapable of lying, but I’d honestly thought Toot was unable to engage in the sort of deception they usually used in its place. I’d assumed his little attention span was too small for that sort of trickery, but he was definitely attempting it now, holding something back from me.

“Toot-toot,” I said more firmly. “This is very important. Remember, this is two pizza slices’ worth of information. I need to know: where would they take the child?”

The pixie gulped and shook his head. “You don’t want to talk to her, Harry! You have a baby—just keep that one.”

In a quiet, steady voice, I said, “I will ask a third time if I have to.”

I didn’t want to do that to the little faerie, who was sort of a friend, because asking a third time would compel him to speak, and most faeries didn’t take kindly to that.

Toot bit his lip, miniscule teeth surprisingly sharp against his skin, before he whispered, “The Roggenmutter. She takes babies sometimes, this time of year. But I don’t know. You should leave her alone, Harry! You have a baby—you don’t need another.”

Despite the obvious warning, I felt a surge of triumph. I had a name, a lead. I was one step closer to getting Little Harry back. 

“Thanks, Toot. That’s definitely two-slice information.”

He perked up at that. “With pepperoni?”

“With pepperoni,” I agreed. I looked down at the kiddo, was making distressed little noises that he hadn’t been able to grab ahold of the pretty little pixie. He huffed loudly through his nose as he strained to grab a wing or twig-like limb.

“Hey, Toot,” I said, almost as an afterthought, “do you know anything about taking care of a baby changeling?”

Toot shrugged both shoulders, the Pepto-Bismol plastic armor crinkling as he did. “Put him in a cage and feed him pizza? Not my pizza, though!”

Sighing internally, I nodded. “I’ll take that under advisement. Thanks for all your help, Toot. I’ll get your pizza later tonight.”

Toot-toot disappeared in a mote of lavender light, and I thoughtfully bounced the baby’s hands up and down, still holding them from when I’d had to stop him from accidentally murdering the pixie. 

At least now I had a name, someone to pursue. The Roggenmutter.

Only problem was, I didn’t have a clue about the Roggenmutter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Toot-toot!! I have been wanting to write this for so long.   
> Things are starting to pick up speed...
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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